Party Politics

New Data Shows US Government Has Been Bought For $14 Billion

February 21, 2022 Lee Camp, Scheer Post. Educate! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Corporatism, Party Politics

There are a lot of reasons so many people hate the two corporate parties, but one of the biggest ones might be just how thoroughly they are bought off by the “One Percent.” (And no, I don’t mean the percentage of people who like Trident’s new Indian Curry Explosion™ chewing gum.) I’m referring to the One Percent who are disgustingly wealthy — people who own ponies for their children to play with and children for their ponies to play with. Those individuals essentially own all our politicians. (Also for their children to play with. … Which explains why Chuck Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand were forced to dress up like Snorks for an entire month. Or maybe they just needed the snorkels to be able to breathe while under an avalanche of bullshit?) But yes, our politicians are more bought-off than ever before.

Democratic Consulting Firm Teams Up With Hospital Industry To Battle Nurses Union

October 22, 2018 Rachel M. Cohen, Theintercept.com Educate! Electoral Politics, Hospitals, Party Politics, Repression, Unions, Workers

THE HOSPITAL INDUSTRY has partnered with a major Democratic consulting firm in an unusual alliance against Massachusetts’s nurses and the bulk of its progressive infrastructure. At issue is a ballot initiative that aims to improve patient safety by limiting the number of patients that can be assigned to a single nurse. If passed, the initiative, known as Question 1, will make Massachusetts the second state in the country to have nurse staffing limits in place. (The exact nurse-to-patient ratio would vary depending on the hospital department.) But, as Election Day inches closer, the initiative’s supporters and opponents are engaged in a heated battle over the costs of implementing the initiative, and what it would mean for patients.

The Lemming Effect And The Left

October 20, 2018 By Greg Godels, Zzs-blg.blogspot.com Educate! Democratic Socialism, Electoral Politics, Party Politics

With two weeks before the mid-Presidential-term US elections, the number of Democratic Party political solicitations in my e-mail inbox now approaches fifty a day. The curious-- “cynical” might be a better word-- thing is that none mention a genuine issue, none suggest an argument for a cause. All come with a folksy tone, an easy familiarity (from Bob, Chuck, Nancy, or Michelle) and all presume that I’m on their “team’ with cash at hand. The cheap emotional card is pulled frequently-- “Do you want to wish President Obama/Michelle Obama/Nancy Pelosi a happy birthday?” or “You didn’t respond to our request, do you HATE Bob Mueller?” Some are scolding: “TRAGIC ENDING. I [Nancy Pelosi] e-mailed yesterday. Barbra Streisand e-mailed. Harry Reid e-mailed.

A Texas Yard Sign Depicted A GOP Elephant With Its Trunk Up A Girl’s Skirt. Police Seized It.

October 9, 2018 Kristine Phillips, Texastribune.org Resist! Electoral Politics, Party Politics, Revisionism

At some point during Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s testimony last week, Marion Stanford grabbed a piece of wooden paneling, some paint and the $5 brushes she had purchased a while back. She brought the items back to her living room, where she had been glued to the television watching the drama unfold in the Senate that day. She had heard Christine Blasey Ford tell senators that Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, was the boy who sexually assaulted her 36 years ago, when they were both in high school. And as she listened to Kavanaugh’s forceful denial and defense of himself, Stanford began to paint.

The Other Side Of John McCain

August 27, 2018 Max Blumenthal, Consortiumnews.com Educate! John McCain, Party Politics, Ruling Class

If the paeans to McCain by diverse political climbers seems detached from reality, it’s because they reflect the elite view of U.S. military interventions as a chess game, with the millions killed by unprovoked aggression mere statistics As the Cold War entered its final act in 1985, journalist Helena Cobban participated in an academic conference at an upscale resort near Tucson, Arizona, on U.S.-Soviet interactions in the Middle East. When she attended what was listed as the “Gala Dinner with keynote speech”, she quickly learned that the virtual theme of the evening was, “Adopt a Muj.” “I remember mingling with all of these wealthy Republican women from the Phoenix suburbs and being asked, ‘Have you adopted a muj?” Cobban told me.

The Bipartisan March For Militarism

August 3, 2018 Staff, Economicfront.wordpress.com Educate! Electoral Politics, militarism, Party Politics, Ruling Class

Republicans and Democrats like to claim that they are on opposite sides of important issues. Of course, depending on which way the wind blows, they sometimes change sides, like over support for free trade and federal deficits. Tragically, however, there is no division when it comes to militarism. For example, the federal budget for fiscal year 2018 (which ends on September 30, 2018), included more money for the military than even President Trump requested. Trump had asked for a military budget of $603 billion, a sizeable $25 billion increase over fiscal year 2017 levels; Congress approved $629 billion. Trump had also asked for $65 billion to finance current war fighting, a bump of $5 billion; Congress approved $71 billion. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2018, which set the target budget for the Department of Defense at this high level, was approved by the Senate in a September 2017 vote of 89-9.

Bipartisan Dysfunctionality Puts The World At Risk

August 2, 2018 Staff, Gp.org Educate! Electoral Politics, Party Politics, Revisionism

All of humanity is being put at risk by the duopoly of Democrats and Republicans opposition to dialogue with Russia. The combination of Russophobia and the Democratic Party's compulsion to criticize Trump's every action, even when he accidentally does something sensible, is preventing the two largest nuclear powers, with the two most advanced militaries in the world, from working together to create a safer and more secure world. President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin finally met for a lengthy meeting. Not much was accomplished, but it might be the beginning of an important dialogue, which could have significant positive impacts. Russia and the United States are involved in many conflicts where de-escalation is possible if a working relationship is established. There are global crisis situations that could be reduced if the two nations work together, and bring other nations with them, to confront those problems.

Republicans & Democrats Unite To Increase Police Power, People Call For Abolition

July 25, 2018 By Ricardo Levins Morales, Rlmartstudio.wordpress.com Create! Electoral Politics, Party Politics, Police, Police Abolition, Ruling Class

Virtually unnoticed in the cacophony of the Trumpian news cycle, a bill to place more power in the hands of police slithered through the House of Representatives with overwhelming bipartisan support – including from such progressive Democratic luminaries as Luis Gutierrez, Raul Grijalva and Keith Ellison. The “Serve and Protect Act” (HR5698) comes packaged as a necessary measure to protect our brave officers “who put on the badge every day to keep us safe” from the dangers of an imaginary “War on Police.” Specifically, it would impose prison terms of up to 10 years for harming or attempting to harm officers of any local, state or federal agencies of what is euphemistically called “law enforcement.” If convicted of carrying out or attempting a kidnapping or killing of an officer, the accused could be imprisoned for life.

Complete Reversal And Betrayal From Major EU Party

July 11, 2017 Ruth Coustick-Deal, www.openmedia.org Educate! Europe, Party Politics

By Ruth Coustick-Deal for Open Media - The European People’s Party (EPP) — the largest party in the EU — has announced they are officially backing the Link Tax. It’s an insulting blow to public voices, informed decision-making, and democracy. Despite major concerns from leading EPP figures and thousands of grassroots citizens, the EPP party has decided to go all in for the broad, sweeping “ancillary copyright on steroids” version of the Link Tax, that was proposed by German Commissioner Gunther Oettinger. It's a shocking u-turn in a tiny space of time. Let’s just take a moment to understand this story: A: Tens of thousands of people email their MEPs, repeatedly: yet none of the larger parties come out against the unpopular Link Tax B: A new MEP is appointed lead for copyright : a few days later the EPP make an official announcement of the party line that parrots the language of the lobbyists. In fact, the EPP has not even announced a unique position: on Article 11 (the Link Tax), their stance is basically a full endorsement of what the Commission originally proposed. This shows they just haven’t been listening to what European citizens have been telling them about how the Link Tax will censor the Internet and restrict our access to information.

The Democratic Party’s Deadly Dead-End

July 6, 2017 Nicolas J S Davies, www.consortiumnews.com Educate! Democratic Party, Party Politics

By Nicolas J S Davies for Consortium News - In 2002, when Margaret Thatcher was asked to name her “greatest political achievement,” she smiled her best cat-that-swallowed-the-canary smile and purred, “Tony Blair and New Labour.”In their recent campaigns, Sanders and Corbyn laid out specific progressive policies to address the real-life problems facing their constituents and their countries and to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations to fully fund healthcare, education and other vital public services. This represents a dramatic U-turn from the vague, deceptive talking points of “center-left” Democratic, Labour and Socialist politicians of the past generation, under cover of which they quietly sold out their constituents to corporate, plutocratic and military-industrial interests. The true measure of the Reagan-Thatcher counterrevolution was not how Reagan and Thatcher changed their own parties’ policies but that they remade their opposition in their own image and thus marginalized progressive politics for a generation in both their countries, clearing the way for the neoliberal transformation of society. Reagan and Thatcher launched a race to the bottom that politicians in France, Germany, Japan and the rest of the developed world soon joined in with.

Fighting The McResistance: Exposing Democrats’ “Good Cop” As Judas

June 13, 2017 Patrick Walker, www.nationofchange.org Resist! Liberals, Party Politics

By Patrick Walker for Nation of Change - In a recent, widely read article, I argued that any meaningful resistance to Donald Trump must take the form of a new, anti-duopoly Occupy-style movement. Given the gargantuan opportunity we now share – and the virtually certain catastrophe we’ll face if we blow that opportunity – the case that article makes needs to reach as wide an activist audience as possible. By an activist audience, I mean precisely the sort of progressive opinion leaders and political organizers who can form coalitions and bring an Occupy-style “movement of movements” into existence. Without such a movement, we’ll simply we see the triumph of Democrats’ utterly shallow, astroturf McResistance – a triumph that, unbeknownst to most (deliberately misinformed) U.S. citizens, could ultimately plunge humanity back into a new Stone Age. Provided, of course, humanity is lucky enough to survive climate Armageddon at all. For too long (as I’ll argue in this article), Democrats have gotten away with playing Good Cop to Republican’s increasingly nasty Bad Cop – to the extent voters have grown impatient with playing Democrats’ patsy and the Good Cop’s cover is almost blown.

Rush To Judgment

March 28, 2017 Justin Raimondo, www.original.antiwar.com Educate! DNC, Party Politics

By Justin Raimondo for Anti War - The allegation – now accepted as incontrovertible fact by the “mainstream” media – that the Russian intelligence services hacked the Democratic National Committee (and John Podesta’s emails) in an effort to help Donald Trump get elected recently suffered a blow from which it may not recover. Crowdstrike is the cybersecurity company hired by the DNC to determine who hacked their accounts: it took them a single day to determine the identity of the culprits – it was, they said, two groups of hackers which they named “Fancy Bear” and “Cozy Bear,” affiliated respectively with the GRU, which is Russian military intelligence, and the FSB, the Russian security service.

US Election Campaign Reveals Mass Alienation From Two-Party System

November 11, 2016 Patrick Martin, www.wsws.org Educate! 2016 Elections, Party Politics

By Patrick Martin for WSWS - A New York Times/CBS poll published Thursday documents the disgust of the American people with the 2016 election campaign and their alienation from the two major corporate-controlled parties. By a margin of 82 percent to 13 percent, better than six to one, those polled said the campaigns of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have filled them with revulsion. According to the Times account, “With more than eight in ten voters saying the campaign has left them repulsed rather than excited, the rising toxicity threatens the ultimate victor.

Mapping The European Left Socialist Parties In The EU

April 16, 2016 Dominic Heilig, www.frosalux-nyc.org Educate! European Union (EU), Party Politics, Socialism

By Dominic Heilig for Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - The European party system is changing rapidly. As a result of the ongoing neoliberal attack, the middle class is shrinking quickly, and the decades-old party allegiance of large groups of voters has followed suit. The European far right has been able to capitalize on this development; in many countries, populist and radical right-wing parties have experienced an unprecedented boom, as Thilo Janssen’s RLS-study on “Far-right Parties and the European Union” shows.

Quebec’s Long Struggle To Build A Democratic Left Party

April 6, 2015 Pierre Beaudet and Richard Fidler, www.rabble.ca Organize! Canada, Left, Party Politics, Quebec, Social Change

In 1971, I worked at the Montréal Central Council of the CSN, where my mentor Michel Chartrand was president. Maligned as an anarcho-syndicalist, he embodied the left opposition in the CSN. He enraged the right wing in the central, which split in 1972 to found the Centrale des syndicats démocratiques (CSD). Chartrand was even beaten up by some thugs during a meeting of the CSN Confederal Council. His relations with Pepin were not cordial. Pepin never indicated any support for him during his lengthy imprisonment under the War Measures Act. Chartrand criticized him above all for not really believing in the "second front." Notwithstanding his outspoken personality in public, the private Chartrand was a humanist, an assiduous reader with a great love of art and a fine taste for good food and wine.

Daily movement news and resources